


On the Passing of Notes

by agent_wheeler



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/F, warning is for strong language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:54:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28410477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent_wheeler/pseuds/agent_wheeler
Summary: “It’s worse than herding cats. It’s like herding moody teenage cats with selective-memory and an admirable disregard for authority. On steroids."
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

The first sign that this was going to be an odd kind of Tuesday was that the subway was fully functional and delivered Etta to work a full twenty minutes before she was supposed to be at her desk. Nobody had ever officially commented on her unfortunate tendency to power-walk into the office at five minutes past nine, but it was generally accepted amongst her colleagues that if they needed Agent Kirkwood for anything, there was no point showing up before 09:10. 

This led on to the second sign. As she was walking down the corridor that contained her office, equipped with a cup of warm liquid the cafe on the ground floor insisted on calling ‘tea’, there was a man already loitering outside her office. Sharply dressed, and with his Level 7 SHIELD ID card pinned to his chest, it was clear he was from another department, even before you considered the fact he’d decided to arrive at Kirkwood’s office at 08:55, a good ten minutes before her unofficial visiting hours. 

“Can I help you?” Etta asked as she approached, rummaging for her door pass with her right hand whilst trying not to spill the drink in her left. Eventually, she liberated her card from the tangle of its own lanyard and pushed the door open, beckoning the stranger inside.   
“I would have sent it through the usual channels, but it’s a bit time-sensitive,” the unknown Agent explained. “Any chance you could get this document drawn up in Russian by the end of the day?” He asked, pulling some paper out of the black document wallet he’d been holding. Etta took the document and glanced over it. It was the SHIELD Internal Security Agreement, a kind of in-house Official Secrets Act, and something that all new hires needed to sign.   
“In Russian, sir?” She queried. It seemed odd that SHIELD would be bringing someone on with insufficient English-language skills. The document was written so that even the thickest of grunts from the Operations Training Academy could understand what they were signing.   
“Yes please. I’ve been told you’re the go-to for this, is that correct?”   
“Yes, sir, that’ll be me. I’ll try and get this to you by lunch? I can drop it round to you if you’d like. Save you trekking all the way to this end of the building again. Where’s your office?”   
The other agent smiled. “Run it up to Commander Hill in Operations, will you? I’m going to be in and out all day, she’s probably easiest to get hold of.”  
“Sure thing, sir,” Etta said, and turned her attention back to the document. It wasn’t a complicated job, and there wasn’t much else on her schedule for the day that couldn’t be rearranged. “I’ll get on it straight away.”

Once the document had been translated and put in Hill’s pigeon-hole (she’d been in a meeting and Etta hadn’t felt like this wasn’t important enough to disturb her over), Etta moved on to the rest of her agenda for the day. It was only 11:00, so there was still plenty of time to crack on with her current main project - translating a SHIELD internal memo about new security protocols into German and French for distribution to the offices at Berlin, Strasbourg and Geneva. A copy would probably make it’s way to Vienna too, but Etta wasn’t the best Austrian German speaker in the department, so she’d need to get the document to Agent Kiellhalle for him to approve before it could be sent on. 

In spite of its impressive technology and research budgets, SHIELD continued to employ a number of translators and interpreters, not so much for field work, but for translating documents and interpreting meetings at SHIELD’s offices across the globe. Etta had spent some time in the London, Berlin and North-Eastern Europe (SHIELD’s term for _somewhere in Russia but we won’t tell you where_ ) offices, but was really enjoying this current New York placement. It was a city she knew well, and she enjoyed the company of her colleagues. They were a small team, only five of them in total, but they functioned well together and produced good work. Between them, they covered the 13 most spoken languages in the world, plus a couple of others. Take Kiellhalle, for example. He’d been brought on for his Arabic proficiency, but he had grown up in Vienna’s diplomatic community, so spoke excellent Austrian German. Etta was another case in point. She’d never actually used her Welsh at work, but you never know, it might come in handy.  
At about 16:45, just as she was thinking about clocking out for the day, a rather harried looking runner knocked on her slightly-ajar office door. “Agent Kirkwood? This is from Agent Coulson. He’s asked if you can get it sorted before you leave for the day?” The runner said, at considerable speed, and thrust a plastic wallet in her general direction. Getting up from behind her desk to retrieve it, Etta noticed it was the IS Agreement she’d translated earlier in the day, with a green post-it note stuck to the front, written on in neat Cyrillic. It read:

_9/10, not bad for a learner  
Also, tough shit, my English is excellent_

Etta huffed out a laugh as she sat down. There was nothing wrong with the document, she knew that, but clearly whoever it was intended for was bored and looking for trouble. If no-one had thought to translate the contents of the post-it note before sending it her way, she figured she had a little room to take a little liberty here. After all, it was a Tuesday, and it wasn’t like anything else was keeping her occupied. Pulling a sheet out of her SHIELD-branded notebook, she wrote back, in Russian: 

_So why not sign the English copy? Deliberately being difficult?_

The next morning, the mysterious Agent from the morning before - Coulson, Etta assumed - was back. “You alright, sir?” Etta asked as he pushed into her office. She’d only been in for about two minutes, the subway had been a bitch again, and Coulson had been loitering around her door as she’d arrived.   
“Thanks for getting that document sorted yesterday, we managed to get it signed in the end. She asked if I could pass this note onto you though?” Coulson said, reaching in his trouser pocket to pull out the same piece of notebook paper she’d sent back with the runner the afternoon prior. Now, underneath her questions, was a response. It read: 

_You guessed it. Plus wanted to see how good the Russian translator they said they could use was. This was fun._

Confused, Etta folded the note up again and put it in her desk drawer.   
“Say anything interesting?” Coulson asked.  
“Don’t know who she is, but she’s got a clever mouth on her. Surprised you haven’t knocked that out of her yet. They must be losing their touch at Ops Academy.” Etta said, only half joking. The look Coulson gave her in reply was an odd one, though, and Etta wondered if she’d said something wrong. “You don’t know the half of it.” Coulson said, and closed the door after himself.


	2. Chapter 2

Etta’s next interaction with Agent Coulson had come about four months later. She’d been shipped out to the DC Office to interpret at two-day conference, and had bumped into Coulson in the lobby of the Triskelion. Coulson had been with another Agent, but once he’d wandered off, she approached him to say hello. There was a bit of an unspoken rivalry between the DC Office and the New York Office, and it was good to have another friendly face on team New York.   
“You here for the conference?” Coulson had asked.  
“Interpreting French to English today for the French Security Minister’s speech. Might see if I can jump on the stuff from the Berlin Office too. How’s you? Your Russian decided she actually wants to work in English?” Etta asked.   
Coulson looked confused for a second, but quickly recovered. “Ah yes, turns out she’s been speaking English since she was six. She wanted to test us by asking for the document in Russian. Seems that we passed with flying colours though. She’s not in DC today, she’s working, but my other toddler has tagged along. Sorry, did I say toddler? I meant Agent,” he said, clearly not feeling sorry at all. “He’ll probably be hanging around the gym the whole time we’re here. He’s not cleared for the conference, and at least if he picks a fight with one of the DC team whilst he’s in the gym he can pass it off as training and I won’t have to deal with the paperwork to send him on more department-mandated anger management training,” Coulson said, fondly.   
“Sounds like you’ve got your hands full.”  
“It’s worse than herding cats. It’s like herding moody teenage cats with selective-memory and an admirable disregard for authority. On steroids. But frankly they’re the best hires SHIELD has made in years and goddammit if I won’t defend their actions to Fury every damn time.”  
“Well, let me know if you need any more sarcastic post-it notes translated out of Russian. It’ll be mildly more interesting work than the dress code memo I spent last week translating into French. Honestly, I’d give pretty much anything to never have to translate another of Director Fury’s aggressively stoic agency-wide memos into German again. Hardly feels like the cutting edge of national security, if you get me?”  
Etta paused. She hadn’t meant to go off on one to Coulson, but something about his kindly face had meant she felt she could. “Anyway, perhaps I’ll catch you around the conference. At least now you’ll know who the disembodied voice in your ear is during this afternoon’s speeches,” she said, by means of a farewell. She still had fifteen minutes to get set up in the booth for the morning sessions, but dammit she needed caffeine before she even tried to start working. 

Etta took her lunch break in the SHIELD Staff Cafeteria. The food wouldn’t be great, but she didn’t fancy the drive into downtown DC. She’d eventually managed to find somewhere to park her hire car, but she didn’t fancy having to circle round the entirety of the car park again if she moved it now - not when she only had 40 minutes anyway.   
The morning had mostly been a chance for Etta to catch up with paperwork that she’d missed whilst she’d been on the train down to DC. Sadly, working on classified projects on AmTrack was largely frowned up by the higher-ups in the e-Security team, after an Agent had left a work laptop on a train somewhere outside Boston and someone had hacked it and sold the information to the media.   
Loading up a plate with the Cafeteria’s finest ‘Carbs 3 ways’ Etta looked across the canteen for somewhere to sit, and settled on a quiet end of a table towards the edge of the room. She’d just been half way through a mouthful of mashed potato when she heard someone approaching. Turning round, she saw it was Agent Coulson and the other Agent he’d been talking to early.   
“Mind if we join you?” Coulson asked. Mouth full, Etta shook her head and gestured for them to join her.   
“Agent Kirkwood, this is Agent Barton.” Coulson said, gesturing to the other man. “Barton, this is Agent Kirkwood, from Translation Services in New York.”  
“One of your moody teenage cats, sir?” Etta asked. Barton looked mildly offended, but Coulson just smiled.   
“It’s like having to perpetually babysit a grumpy 14-year-old except he could definitely kill you if he wanted to.”  
“Sir, in my defence, Romanoff is much worse than I am. At least I haven’t started a fight today. Do you remember when we were in Paris? And she broke the armourer’s leg?” Barton interjected. Etta’s face must have betrayed her disbelief, as he quickly added: “I mean, he was fine, but, still. Worst I’ve done to a friendly has been push them down a flight of stairs. And he didn’t even break anything. Whined like a bitch, but he was literally completely fine.”  
“Agent Barton, would you stop?” Coulson said, exasperated. “I was trying to give Agent Kirkwood the impression that I was at least vaguely capable of keeping you both in line.”  
Barton scoffed. “Good luck with that, sweetie,” he said, and turned his attention to the huge pile of fries on his plate, and his glass of soda.


	3. Chapter 3

At half past six on Sunday night, Etta received an email from Director Fury. This was odd in and of itself; normally messages from the top of SHIELD were passed down through the chain of command, and would have reached Etta through her SO. More odd, though, was the content of the email. With absolutely no preamble and no context, Etta had been summoned to report to Director Fury’s office at 08.00 the following morning.  
She was so convinced that the subway was going to fuck her over that Etta arrived at the office at the earliest time she’d ever managed in her entire SHIELD career. It gave her fifteen minutes to get something from the actually-half-decent coffee shop two blocks over, and she still arrived at Fury’s top floor office five minutes early. Clearly by some sort of witchcraft, Fury must have heard her approaching and the door opened just as she reached it. Fury was sat behind his desk, and stood to his left was Maria Hill. Etta had only had a couple of one-on-one interactions with the Deputy Director, and never actually met Fury in an individual context, even in her three years working at SHIELD. Standing opposite Fury, she adopted parade rest. Fury gestured for her to take the seat in front of her, and she sat down, but didn’t relax. 

“We need to get you field-cleared by the end of the week, Kirkwood,” Fury said, bluntly. Etta was taken aback. She’d spent basically her entire SHIELD career sitting in an Office.   
“Sir?” Etta asked.  
“You’ll be deploying on the Helicarrier on Saturday for a 4-week deployment, and we need to make sure you’re up to speed before you go.” Fury continued, although this wasn’t really the question Etta had been asking. Something gave her the impression Fury was deliberately avoiding explaining what was actually going on. He’d always seemed the sort of person who’d tell you to jump, and you jumped.   
“Commander Hill has put a training package together to get you ready. She’ll discuss the details of it with you afterwards. You’ll get your proper brief once we’re in the air. Hill?”   
“As Director Fury said, there’s a fair amount of content to get you through by the end of the week, but we should be fine. We’ll have to get you re-certified for your firearm, and you’ll probably have to go down to Stores to get kit, but everything else should be fairly straightforward. We’ll put you in with one of the training courses that starts this morning to go through it all, but if you’ve got any questions just ping me an email and we’ll sort it out. Make sense?”   
“Yes, ma’am,” Etta replied.  
“Good, that’s settled then.” Fury said, clapping his hands and standing up. “Dismissed.”

Etta didn’t think it’d been that long since she’d done her SHIELD Basic Training, but it quickly became apparent she’d grown rusty sat behind a desk. In a cohort of Agents fresh from the Academy, she took classes in marksmanship and strategy, as well as joining in a fairly intense physical training regimen. By the end of the week, she’d pretty much gotten on top of everything, and finished her day on Friday with a trip to the Stores to pick up the ridiculous amount of kit she’d been issued. The black duffel bag probably weighed more than she did. She’d arranged to stay on-base that evening, so that there was no chance she’d miss the Helicarrier’s scheduled departure time on Saturday morning.


End file.
